(RoyalPatriot.com )- Russia is wearing off using foreign aircrafts Boeing and Airbus after Western sanctions have severely affected its aviation sector, according to The Epoch Times. Russia is currently looking to locally manufacture its aircraft as a result sanctions making it more difficult for the country to secure the parts to maintain its aircraft.
Rostec, a state-owned defense conglomerate, sees the situation as an opportunity to ramp up local manufacturing, according to the outlet.
“Foreign aircraft will drop out of the fleet,” Rostec told Reuters. “We believe that this process is irreversible and Boeing and Airbus planes will never be delivered to Russia. We don’t expect sanctions to be eased and we are building our plans based on the existing tough scenario.”
Foreign aircraft, such as Boeing and Airbus are used for 95 percent of Russia’s passenger traffic, with only 470 out of 1,287 being produced in the country. By 2025, estimates project that Russia’s total fleet will shrink to 999 aircraft, but by 2030, as a result of domestic output, total fleet is expected to jump to a little over 1,600, including 208 foreign aircraft.
But the plan to increase domestic output 1,036 airlines in the span of seven years is met with skepticism by the managing director of U.S.-based AeroDynamic Advisory, Richard Aboulafia, who called it “basically impossible.” He noted that Russia and the Soviet Union only built about 2,000 total commercial aircraft.
“Even when they could get semiconductors and other vital components from the West, they were having a very hard time producing more than a handful of jets,” Aboulafia said.
The difficulty to maintain current planes appears to be dire as Russia advised airline companies to use parts from some aircraft to ensure that the remaining planes are kept operating until at least 2025. There is currently no national regulation on airlines using existing parts to maintain aircraft, but such regulation is expected to come into effect at the start of 2023.
Projections are calling for a decrease in airline passenger traffic in the coming years. While expecting an initial unchanged 100 million this year, traffic is expected to drop to 76.3 million in 2025, while a more dire scenario has the drop at 58.2 million passengers.
